Even a Stone
by rayemars
Summary: Yugi learns the very, very hard way that in some people, the desire for power is a greater pull than the feeling of love.


Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.

How to tell when rayemars is being lazy or writing fluff: she uses fanon names like "Yami" and "Bakura" for the respective spirits. The book Yugi quotes from is _I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Hannah Green._

This is an AU, because it doesn't occur in any real time period in the show. It sort of lives in a little vortex, and the characters may be acting more sadistic than they should. This is the challenge Chevira Lowe gave me in return for her writing a Pegasus/Otogi fic: consensual Bakura/Yugi. It's...kinda that. In a way. I suppose you would call this the end of their relationship.

Because my beta is a hentai: the conversation between Yami and Yugi at the end is not meant to be shounen-ai. You can read it as that if you like, but the pairing isn't my kink, so it's not written as such.

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****

Though he didn't want them to, the tears in Yugi's eyes spilled over and ran down his cheeks in a slow, curving pattern.  Only two, though...he saw the uselessness of crying in a hopeless situation like this.  The one trailing down his right cheek fell first, landing on the back of his hand with a quiet 'plip' that was lost in the echo of the voices above him.  The left one was not so precise, falling instead to the carpet of the tastefully decorated apartment, any noise it might have made absorbed into the beige shag.

There was the sound of laughter in front of him, rich and dark and full of the promise of suffering.  Behind him there was only the sound of a negotiation, and in the pauses, silence.  No comfort, no explanations of why Yugi had finally found himself here, on the ground between hatred and betrayal.  A sob hitched in his throat.

The laughter came again.  "Are you afraid, Yugi Mutou?" asked the blond in front of him.  He shuddered involuntarily at the malice which underlaid each word.  The Egyptian snorted and reached down to cup Yugi's chin, forcing him to look up at those hard violet eyes.  His face hardened even more at the open pain and pleading etched on Yugi's face.  "Bastard," he said bitterly, letting Yugi's head drop to stare at the carpet again.  "Save your tears for later."

Yugi squeezed his eyes shut at that and another tear found its way out, sliding down his chin and onto the dull metal of the handcuffs.  There was the faintest hint of a noise from behind him, and a memory surfaced unbidden in Yugi's mind.  The first time they had made love--it had hurt so much he began crying, and the spirit had licked away his tears and murmured soft, coaxing encouragements in his ear as his hands trailed gently over Yugi's chest.  He hadn't been able to believe that the thief was capable of such tenderness.

But it had all been a lie.  So in hindsight, it made perfect sense.  Yugi shivered once more and a whimper slipped past his lips, halting the voices above him.  A hiss of disgust came from the teenager in front of him, but still only silence from behind.  "Am I supposed to believe that **this wretch is the other half of the one responsible for my father's death?"**

"I've fulfilled my end of the bargain, Ishtar.  Now keep yours."  The harsh quality of the voice behind him sent another tremor through Yugi, and he bit down hard on his lip to keep from sobbing again.  There was a sharp pain and the bitter, metallic taste of blood began to trickle into his mouth from the rip.

He deserved the pain.  He had asked for this.  He had not listened to Yami's warnings, or Ryou's, instead believing the words of the thief.  For two years he had believed, blindly and naively as only he could do, that he had been right.  It had been so easy for the spirit to convince him not to wear the Puzzle tonight, trailing his fingers along Yugi's lips and whispering about joining him in bed....

And then the pricking sting of a needle, and waking up in an unknown apartment handcuffed with his mouth dry and tongue feeling like cotton.  As soon as he sensed Yugi's return to consciousness, Bakura had dropped the small teen, who fell on his knees before the other standing in the room.

It had taken just one look at the smirking features of the blond for Yugi to swallow and have his world crash down around him.  He had started to stutter out "Why?" but the voice behind him--the voice he thought he'd known--began talking about deals and payments.  And Yugi had cried.

Malik Ishtar narrowed his eyes at the thief in front of him, whose face revealed that he was in the middle of threatening excruciating pain to his lighter half if Ryou didn't shut up **right now.  He fingered the Millennium Rod at his side.  He had looked forward to burying the dagger up to the hilt in the bleeding, broken mass of flesh that would be Yugi Mutou when he was finished with the boy.**

However, there was little chance of Bakura leaving the apartment until he had received his reward.  And Malik preferred solitude for the things he had planned.  With a final caress, he unhooked the Rod and presented it, dagger first, to Bakura.  "Here.  I trust you can find you own way out?"

The spirit's cold demeanor was belied by the rapidness with which he snatched the Rod from Malik's hands.  "Good riddance, Ishtar," he said with casual arrogance, turning to leave.

Still on his knees, Yugi's head jerked up and twisted to call after him: "I loved you!"  The boy's eyes shone with unshed tears.

Malik watched, amused, as Bakura froze halfway to the door.  There was a pause.

"That's what makes this so easy," came the reply at last, laced with the thief's typical coldness.  However, Bakura refused to turn his head and look Yugi in the eyes, even when another choked sob left the boy's throat at the words.  Bakura shifted the Millennium Rod to his other hand, then walked out of the room.

Malik reached down and gripped the chain of the handcuffs, wrenching Yugi to his feet.  The boy stared at him in wide-eyed terror as he roughly rubbed the cut on his lip.  Malik leaned forward and whispered into his ear: "You can start crying now."

The sound of the door slamming echoed through the hallway, and another shudder ran through Yugi before he collapsed limply into Malik's waiting hands.

~~~~~

The various different hurts inflected on his body had melded themselves into one steady burning pain throughout.  His eyes burned from all the tears he had cried, and his mouth was filled with the bitter, brackish taste of drying blood--blood that had welled up in his throat after spilling out of internal injuries, bones carefully broken in order to puncture the soft tissues of the organs beneath without killing him.  Yet.  Malik had yet to feel merciful.

Yugi had lost all sense of anything.  The pain left him in a suspended state, hanging on the fringes of unconsciousness.  Occasionally he was aware of Malik speaking to him, but the teenager's words had lost their ability to penetrate the haze Yugi drifted in.

He was aware of something pulling at his mind, fragments of a thought struggling through the haze to get clear.  He tried to pull it together, to make it make sense.  Anything to take him away from this, anything to forget what was being done to him because of Bakura....

A book.  One that Ryou had lent him last semester for a report.  One line had gone: "...you ought to realize that _that hell...can't last any more than you can stand it. It's like physical pain...there's just so much and then, __no more!"_

That was a lie.  This was more than he could stand, and yet it continued.

Had everything been a lie?  Was there anything he could have believed in?

He had the faint idea that there was a face...someone he could trust....But trust had led him here.  There **couldn't be anyone.**

There was a sting in his neck, discernable only for the fact that it lacked much of the pain that had been previously inflicted on him.  The burning in his body began to fade.  Yugi blinked several times, and the shadows encroaching on his sight drifted away.  He saw Malik lift a hypodermic needle, hovering it over Yugi's eyes so he had to see it.

He hadn't been able to speak for what felt like a long, long time, after he tore his throat so badly with screaming.  His lips might have moved in the attempt of a question, but he couldn't feel it if they had.

Whether or not Yugi moved, Malik sensed his question.  "Morphine," he answered casually, as if he hadn't just returned from rinsing blood from his hands.  He crouched next to Yugi on the tarp he had laid out over the carpet.  "Just enough so you stay awake," he grinned ferally.

Yugi shut his eyes again, trying to block out his consciousness as the pain drained further and further away, leaving him limp and boneless.  Helpless.  He had been so stupid....

The book had continued.  "'You mean that there is a limit to the thing?'"

"'Well, _more would be __obscene, my dear, simply __obscene!'"_

When would it quit?  It **had to be soon; Yugi didn't even know how he was surviving this.**

A hand gripped his shoulders roughly and flipped him over.  Yugi managed to choke out a moan as a fractured rib dug into his lung, the pain soaring over his drugged senses and causing more blood to well in his throat.  He almost let it, ready to swallow it down and hope that he would choke to death.  If it would make this stop....

A hand pinched his nose close, and out of instinct Yugi began to breathe through his mouth, coughing out blood as he did so.  Tremors racked his body with each burst of pain that the morphine couldn't prevent.  Now what...?

Malik glanced down at the smooth skin of Yugi's back, the one place he had left deliberately undamaged.  The left side of Yugi's body twisted up awkwardly where he had dislocated the shoulder, but that was all.  It would make the tip of the wing harder to get straight, but it was still only a minor deterrent.  He straddled the other teenager's body, settling himself on the soft and bleeding flesh of Yugi's thighs.

"You should be grateful," Malik said, leaning down to whisper in Yugi's ear.  "I wasn't given this much consideration."  A strangled, wet intake of breath was his only reply.  He reached over and picked up the knife lying upon the tarp, making sure to flash the light off the blade and into Yugi's eyes.  Another wet breath, and then Malik sat back and placed the tip of the blade at the top of the first vertebrae on Yugi's back.  He dug the knife in and began to carve the circle.

Yugi let out a hoarse cry, still unable to scream like he wanted to.  Another coughing fit made him shake uncontrollably, until Malik slammed a hand on his neck to hold him still.  He had been wrong again--he had been able to withstand everything before.  But not this...not this....This was different than before; Malik's actions had been just as precise, but quicker, not so deliberately drawn out...this was slow and it hurt so much!  Make it stop!  He'd do anything, just let him go!  Yugi tried to form the plea, but his throat no longer worked.

Another fragment of the book drifted together in his mind: "'Will you never end it! Even a stone cannot bear to this limit...even a stone!'"  The story had gone on, something to do with diamonds, but his mind was too fractured with pain to recall more than that which applied to the situation.

Then knife curved away from his spine, sliding to cut open the skin over his dislocated shoulder, and Yugi tried to scream again.

"**Mind Crush!" came a familiar voice, cutting through the drugs, the pain, the knife, everything.  Yugi felt himself splinter more.  Not him, oh please not him...why had Bakura come back?  What was he going to do now?**

Malik's body collapsed over him, pushing Yugi into the tarp and grinding bones further into his internal organs.  He managed a noise, indecipherable and unintelligible, before the Egyptian's former husk was wrenched off of him.  There was a brief pause, and then the smooth metal chain of the Puzzle slipped around his neck.  A trembling hand lifted Yugi's and placed it on the gold item, and Yugi gratefully retreated into his soul room.

There was a strange feeling of disconnectedness for a minute, before Yugi finally realized that the pain was gone.  Completely; and the haze of the morphine had left, too.  It was as if....

He didn't want to look; he was certain that he would be disappointed.  But the longer he huddled on his bed, blissfully free of pain, the more the thought pecked at him.  Finally he unfolded his body and stood up, walking unsteadily to the door on legs that were still not completely convinced that they should be working.

In the mindcorridor, his other was collapsed outside the door to his own soul room.  Yugi ran up to him.  "Ya...Yami?"

He watched as the spirit gathered himself together, leaving the consciousness of their body to speak to Yugi.  "Yes, aibou."

Yugi threw himself into the spirit's arms, unable to pull back even when he heard Yami's wince.  "I, I...how?  I thought Bakura had ki--I'm sorry!  I'm **so sorry I didn't listen, Yami, I'm so ****stupid!  I should have...."  Yugi trailed off, unable to hold back his sobs any longer.**

Yami wrapped his arms around the boy, trying to comfort him.  He disassociated from Yugi's body as much as he could without subjecting the boy to any feelings of pain again, and stroked Yugi's hair.  "Shh, aibou.  Ryou loaned me his body to come here.  It will be all right now."

Yami almost hesitated to say the last, however.  Even this faintly, he could feel that the wounds Yugi had suffered were grievous and meant to be fatal.  Though he knew Ryou was calling for an ambulance to take Yugi to the disciples of Imhotep, he was not certain it would be enough.  He would have to leave soon, to focus all his energy on keeping Yugi's body alive.

He stroked the back of the boy who was still sobbing incomprehensibly into his chest, murmuring anything that came to mind.  At least Yugi had not asked about Bakura's fate.  He had banished the thief once more, though the first time had proven fruitless, concerned more with getting to Yugi than finishing the man permanently.  He would have to remember to thank Ryou for his help, as well.

He was vaguely aware of the white-haired teenager hovering over Yugi's body, and sensed that he needed to return to it.  He did not savor the prospect--the damage was so extensive that he felt pain even here, but he would not allow Yugi to slip from this world because he had failed to protect him.  If necessary, he would attempt to use the Puzzle to form and put Yugi into a new body before this one failed.

He hugged Yugi as tightly as he could before drawing back.  "Yugi, I have to leave.  These wounds can't go untended," he said gently.

Yugi shuddered again and kept his face buried in Yami's shoulder.  "I deserve it," he whispered.  "All of this...I deserve it.  I was so blind and stupid, I didn't listen."  He looked up at Yami with watery eyes.  "You shouldn't pay for my mistakes."

Yami pulled the boy into another embrace.  "No.  I am not paying for anything.  Do not let yourself suffer needlessly, Yugi.  In some, power is simply a stronger pull than love."  There was far more that needed to be said, much that he needed tell to and comfort his other half with, but he could feel the life oozing from Yugi's body as Ryou did the best he could to patch it up.  "Aibou, I **must go," he said gently.**

Yugi swallowed and nodded.  "Thank you.  Thank you, Yami; I don't deserve you."

The spirit shook his head.  "And I have thought the same of you, Yugi.  I shall not leave you, no matter what."  Yami squeezed his hand before leaving, and in the wake of his going Yugi felt a brush of the pain he had almost forgotten, like the after draft of a closing door.  He shuddered.

After a few moments, Yugi stood up again and stumbled into his room.  He climbed back on the bed and fell into an exhausted sleep, and dreamed of the single face of truth within a sea of lies.


End file.
